Natixis

Ghana became the first Sub-Saharan African sovereign to access the bond market this year on Tuesday, printing tranches of dollar paper on Tuesday and receiving one of the largest order books ever for a bond from the region.

A French public sector borrower is ready to hit the road to market its inaugural benchmark bond, following the launch of its Euro Medium Term Note programme at the end of last year.

Uralkali, a Russian potash fertiliser producer, has sent out a request for proposals to lenders in a bid to raise $1bn. But bankers say that the Russian market is beset with difficulties that are delaying the few transactions in the pipeline.

The Republic of Benin has opened books for its debut bond — a six year euro amortiser. Ghana is also expected to enter the market on Tuesday, following a roadshow to promote a dollar bond.

Abertis Infraestructuras, the Spanish toll roads group, launched on Monday the four tranche bond issue it had roadshowed for last week, and found Europe’s corporate bond market as avid for paper as it has been for the last couple of weeks. That enabled it to achieve a huge book totalling €14.5bn and at least one negative new issue premium.

Following the success of the jumbo acquisition financing for Brookfield and CPDQ’s purchase of Johnson Controls’ Power Solutions unit, European leveraged loan buyers now have a wide variety of credits to assess, with deals from Ceva Santé, Delachaux, Konecta and Hotelbeds in the market this week.

Solar energy generator Sonnedix has signed a €250m bank facility, as it looks to snap up new projects in OECD countries.

Rating: Aa2/—/AA

Guarantor: France

The extraordinary conditions in Europe’s investment grade corporate bond market, in which three issuers in succession had printed multi-tranche bonds this week with no new issue premiums, produced a new bizarre result on Wednesday when Sanofi, one of the market’s tightest-trading issuers, took its turn.

Unédic priced through fair value for its first bond of the year on Wednesday, as the European Central Bank’s announcement of fresh liquidity supercharged an already red hot euro SSA market. African Development Bank will hope to find similar success in the 10 year part of the curve after mandating banks for its first benchmark of the year.

Public sector borrowers in the euro SSA market received strong demand in both the short and long ends of the curve on Tuesday. KfW took advantage of the blistering conditions to sell its first euro benchmark with a three year maturity since 2015, while Société du Grand Paris (SGP) sold its biggest ever bond.